Reading the Tea Leaves

Tea Education, Consultancy, and Tastings

Archive for Category : Travel

A stop at the Dragonwell tea gardens is virtually de rigueur for any tourist visiting China since Hangzhou and its famed West Lake are on most itineraries. (The photo immediately below is at a Dragonwell plantation.) Picturesque, must-see destinations such as Yellow Mountain (Huang Shan in Anhui) and Mt. Emei (Sichuan) abound with tea shops, [...]

(Part 6: from Dali to Sichuan) A short flight brought us from Kunming to Yibin in Sichuan. Our local guide described Yibin as a “small city,” which in my mind means a population of 250,000 or double that. Yibin’s population in fact numbered five million, and its status as a prefecture-level city was reflected in [...]

(Part 5: on the road from Lijiang to Dali) Our van’s flat tire was, of course, unexpected, the first such incident on any such trip. Perhaps the van really had been too heavily laden with our bags. As our driver set out to change the tire, we drifted off along well marked narrow paths, merely [...]

(Part 4: Puer price fluctuations) Our first tasting (in a commercial teahouse) was at the Black Dragon Pool Park in Lijiang. We had the large room to ourselves, a place where tea demonstrations and lectures are held. A very self-assured young Naxi woman listed some of the teas we could try, and we must have [...]

(Part 3: Puer tea factories in Yunnan) Factories such as these were established in or near the cities of Lijiang, Dali, Simao, and Fengqing, situated in areas where terrain, climate, and soil combined as ideal conditions to support tea. These collection points represented over twenty-five tea producing counties. Our group’s trip took place as Puer [...]